JK Rowling the author of the Harry Potter series as written her first book for adults. The Casual Vacancy was published today, but has failed to live up to the high expectations. Parents who love the Harry Potter books may be shocked by the dark content of the adult novel, critics have slated the book for being dull and banal; although saying it was funnier than they would have imagined. Readers may be shocked by the graphic depictions of pornography and the use of the f-word, and c-word. The book shows the darker, grittier side of life in a small English village. The characters include a prositiute, a drug dealer, and teenage girl raped by her mum’s heroin dealer. The is the deaths of children and a teen suicide. The Telegraph’s literary critic remarks, “As for the ending, dear God, it is so howlingly bleak that it makes Thomas Hardy look like PG Wodehouse.”
When challenged in an interview about the novel, and any responsibility she may have as the world’s most famous children’s author Rowling said, “There is no part of me that feels like I represented myself as your children’s babysitter or their teacher. I’m a writer and I will write what I want to write.”